Posts Tagged ‘corn’

Forget cotton candy, caramel corn, and funnel cakes. If you’ve been to a fair or festival recently—the national calendar is clogged with dates in August and September—you know food offered on the midway has veered into “freak show” territory. Fried nuggets of pure butter, beer-battered dill pickles stuffed with hot dogs, and even deep-fried Kool-Aid. (Don’t ask.) With nearly everything on a stick.
I couldn’t help myself: I started trolling newspapers, blogs, and the food press to find the most outrageous fair-type foods that could be replicated...

A company well-known for canned and frozen vegetables recently announced America’s favorite vegetable is . . . drum roll, please . . . broccoli. Sorry, but I’m not buying it. And not just because they only polled 4,000 people.
What I am buying is sweet corn—from roadside stands, the farmers’ market, and when they’re selling fresh local ears, even the supermarket. Just-picked sweet corn is in season in many states right now, making it one of the best things about August and the dog days of summer.
Corn has its...

Barbecue University—the incredible hands-on grilling class founded and hosted by Steven Raichlen to share his grilling and barbecue expertise—is just around the corner. One of our favorite springtime tasks is developing the menus. Since 2001, thousands of students have attended these three-day sessions, many traveling thousands of miles to learn the secrets of live-fire cooking from one of the world’s foremost authorities. Hosted by the luxurious Forbes 5-star...

They get me when the first veterans march by. World War Two vets, white-haired but proud, followed by the men and women who served in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, and now Afghanistan and Iraq. Then comes a real Fife and Drum Corps in Revolutionary War garb, their snare drums rattling you to attention.
It’s the Independence Day parade in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard. I’ve celebrated July 4th in a lot of places (including overseas), but there’s nothing like a small town parade to make you feel patriotic.
This Independence Day marks another...

It’s everyone’s favorite time of year: the time when we shed our scarves, break out the patio furniture, and gear up for some glorious summer grilling.
If you’ve been avoiding your grill since the first signs of winter, or simply need a brush-up on your technique, below is Part 2 of my favorite grilling tips to help you kick off the season the right way. (For Part 1 click here.)
7. Boiling ribs is a rookie mistake
Never, EVER boil...

I grew up in Iowa where we harbored rather provincial ideas about sweet corn. As far as we were concerned, there was just one way to do it: fill a speckled enamel pot with water and a spoonful of sugar, put the pot over a quick flame, then trot out to the garden to pick and husk the corn. We’d boil the ears for three minutes, then remove them to a platter with tongs.
At the table, we’d jab the ends of the ears with twin-pronged corn holders, impale a cube of cold butter on the end of a fork, and run it over the steaming, tightly packed kernels. A sprinkle of table salt and black pepper, and you were...

The world of barbecue is rife with “grate” debates. Gas versus charcoal. Dry ribs versus wet. Then there’s the “corntroversy” over the best way to grill sweet corn, which is in peak season in August: Does it taste better grilled with the husk on or off?
Advocates of the husk-on school maintain that grilling corn with the protective green sheath intact protects the tender kernels from the harsh dry heat of the grill.
Husk-offers—of which I’m a partisan—point out...

Travel the world’s barbecue trail and you’ll find a number of constants. Every culture has its version of grilled ground meat, for example, from Middle Eastern kofta to Pakistani chapli kebab to the classic American hamburger.
Meat on a stick is another constant, morphing from Peruvian anticuchos to French brochettes to Azeri lula, Indonesian sate, and Turkish shish kebab.
Summertime, with its farmers markets and roadside produce stands,...

Ignore the obvious irony. On Mothers Day, a guy and his kids jump through hoops to make sure mom doesn’t have to set foot in the kitchen. On Fathers Day, the same guy is expected not only to cook for his family, but stage an awesome feast. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Father’s Day takes place during one of the best months of the year for grilling, and that most men welcome any occasion to fire up the grill -- even if it’s in the service of their own celebration....

LABOR DAY FEAST
The Raichlens will be celebrating the holiday with a beach barbecue with their friends Mitch and Stephanie Reiter. (For all you campers out there, they own Camp Towanda in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.)
First, a basket of steamers dug that morning.
Corn from the local farmstand, grilled husks off.
Finally, fresh lobster basted with herbed butter and finished with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Happy Labor Day...